Earlier this spring, I read through the plans and measured the space outside my door and figured it would be great! Sometime in May I bought the wood and a few days later I cut it up, as dictated by the tutorial.
The plans called for pocket-holes to keep the seams connecting the boards from being visible, and offers extra stability.. good stuff all around! And, as it happened, I'd gotten a pocket-hole jig for Christmas a couple years ago. However, I'd never used it.. truth be told, I was a little afraid of it... it seemed so much more complicated than just drilling a regular hole. However, I really wanted to make this planter, and it seemed silly to be afraid of a tool.... so to YouTube I went. I found a few instructional videos that gave me a better idea of how to make this thing work and I jumped in!
Happily, it's pretty easy once you get started and, before long, I'd gotten all the holes drilled in that cool, diagonal way. After that, it was on to assembling the frames.
Once all the sides were finished, I did a dry-run assembly to see what it'd look like when it was done. It was HUGE!! Turns out, since spring, a big hydrangea bush grew up and took over that whole section where I'd originally thought to put the planter... and there's not really space to share. So, I was faced with a dilemma... what to do??
I vacillated about what could be done.. trim it down? Scrap it? Start over with different plans?? In the end, I decided to see if I could trim it down; make it a rectangular planter vs. an enormous square one... It actually wasn't too hard, and it looked better than I expected; almost like I meant for it to be that way!
Next, full assembly. I lined up all the pieces, added some screws and, voila!
It's a little less than perfectly square.. but it'll stand! Then, I added some slates inside to make a shelf for planting.
Now, all it was wanting was some color. I thought I had some stain stashed away in my collection, however, when I went to find it there was nothing there. Though it did mean I'd have to wait a bit to really finish it, it meant I got to pick the perfect color.
After a trip to the store, I got a dark walnut.. It looked a little darker on my planter than their example at the store. But the color was a definite improvement.
It'd been super hot and humid here, so I let it sit a couple days to be sure it was all the way dry before adding the seal. Once the seal was dry, it was time for plants!
Turns out, an upside for waiting so long to put a plant in there was that most everything at the greenhouse was on sale! So, I picked this gorgeous one with lots of color and trailing flowers. I dropped it into the planter and voila!
Next, decide where to put it, out front. Originally, I'd thought to put it on one side of the door or other... but those two plants were huge!! No space for a planter there.
But, then the big gap between plants, in front of my window, was calling for something to fill it. So, there it went!
This project has been all over the map for how I've felt about how things were going... but, all's well that ends well! It came out just right.
1 comment:
Looks like they turned out wonderfully! You're magic!
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